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Wednesday, December 5, 2007

On Tuesday, the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs‘s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing titled “Credit Card Practices: Unfair Interest Rate Increases.” The hearing examined the circumstances under which credit card issuers may increase the interest rates of cardholders who are in compliance with the terms of their credit cards. It was a follow-up to a March 2007 hearing.

Subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin said in his opening statement: “Today’s focus is on credit card issuers who hike the interest rates of cardholders who play by the rules — meaning those folks who pay on time, pay at least the minimum amount due, and wake up one day to find their interest rate has gone through the roof — again, not because they paid late or exceeded the credit limit, but because their credit card issuer decided they should be ‘repriced’.”

Present to testify on behalf of credit card issuers were Roger C. Hochschild of Discover Financial Services, Bruce L. Hammonds of Bank of America Corporation, and Ryan Schneider of Capital One Financial Corporation.

Much of the 90 minute hearing focused on specific cases where interest rates were raised, allegedly because credit scores of the debtor dropped, and not because they were delinquent or otherwise behind on payments. According to Levin, this practice made it so that almost all payments went towards finance charges with almost none toward repaying the principal. This, he felt, is an unfair practice, as the credit card companies were negligent in informing their customers of the rate hikes and the reason for such hikes.

The collective credit card debt of Americans totals an estimated US$900 billion. Issuers have come under pressure to disclose their policies in regards to setting fees and interest rates. The US Truth in Lending Act requires that terms of a loan be set forth up front. Fluctuating interest rates on credit cards would, on the surface, appear to violate this act.

Roger C. Hochschild disagreed, arguing that “every card transaction is a new extension of credit … This makes it difficult — and risky — to underwrite, and price, the loan based solely on the borrower’s credit-worthiness at the time of application [for the card].”

Ryan Schneider, agreed: “The ability to modify the terms of a credit card agreement to accommodate changes over time to the economy or the credit-worthiness of consumers must be preserved.”

“Attempts to interfere with the market here … will inevitably result in less credit being offered,” warned Bruce Hammonds. “Risk-based pricing has democratized access to credit,” he added.

All three credit card executives also mentioned an ongoing Federal Reserve System review of credit card rules that already proposes a 45-day notification ahead of any rate changes.

Committee members criticized the industry for varying practices. Included in the criticism was the practice of mailing checks to card-holders, failing to notify applicants that obtaining additional cards could lower their credit score and raise their rates, and “ambushing” card-holders with raised rates.

Ranking minority member of the subcommittee, Norm Coleman said, “families find themselves ensnared in a seemingly inescapable web of credit card debt. They particularly report being saddled with interest rates that skyrocketed on them seemingly out of the blue.”

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Five years after its launch, Apple Computer‘s iTunes downloadable music service in February passed Wal-Mart to become the No. 1 music seller in the United States, according to figures released April 3 by NPD Group, a market research firm.

The firm said more than 4 billion songs had been downloaded from the iTunes store since its launch in 2003 and that as of February, the iTunes store accounts for 70% of all digital music sales. NPD said according to those figures, Apple’s iTunes store passes U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy for the No. 2 U.S. music retailer in 2007.

According to an April 2nd report in Ars Technica, an internal memo at Apple showed the company passed Wal-Mart as the top U.S. music seller Wal-Mart at the beginning of the year. Their projections showed that as of January 2008, Apple’s iTunes held 19 percent of the U.S. music market with Wal-Mart at 15 percent, followed by Best Buy at 13 percent. Rounding out the top five were Amazon.com and Target at 6 percent each.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

The Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) of Singapore announced yesterday the first arrests made following the listing of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) as Class A controlled drugs on Thursday, under the First Schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The suspects, two unnamed male Singaporeans, aged 22 and 23, were reportedly arrested at a shopping center in Tampines on Friday evening for possession of synthetic cannabis, also known as “K2”. Authorities recovered 71.7 g of the drug from the suspects.

Under suspicion from the CNB that the 22-year-old suspect was engaged in trafficking of the illegal substance, a further search of his home yielded an additional 22.3 g of synthetic cannabis, raising the total amount of the drug confiscated following the arrests to 94 g.

Synthetic cannabis, listed as an NPS, and known as a “legal high”, is one of a group of designer drugs created to stimulate the effects of controlled drugs including cocaine, Ecstasy, methamphetamine, and heroin. The CNB has linked NPS abuse to symptoms including severe intoxication, hallucinations, paranoia, seizures, cadiovascular problems, renal failure, and death.

Typically having chemical structure very similar but slightly different from controlled drugs, these substances have been illegalized, and their possession, consumption, trafficking, and manufacturing now carry penalties comparable to that of controlled drugs. Last year, under the Fifth Schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act, designed to study NPSs before their illegalization, they could be confiscated by authorities, but no further penalty would be levied.

The changes to NPS status follow increases over the past year in NPS trafficking and consumption, according to the CNB. Commenting on the move, a spokesperson for the CNB revealed the organization has reported at least thirty NPS seizures in the period from last May through this February. “Thus far,” the spokesperson noted, “synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones are the two more commonly detected NPS”.

Termed an “alarming new drug problem” by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, its World Drug Report 2013 indicated an increase to 348 NPSs in 2013, up from 251 in 2012. Capitalizing on their legality — which no longer holds in Singapore — NPSs have been known as “legal highs”, “research chemicals”, “plant food”, and “bath salts”.

Commenting on the illegalization of NPSs, Ng Ser Song, the director of the CNB, had this to say. “The drug situation is challenging and the number of repeat drug abusers and young drug abusers remains a concern. With the abuse and trafficking of NPS on the rise, listing these new psychoactive substances as Class A controlled drugs signals our unequivocal stance that these substances are illegal and no different from other controlled drugs.”

Under the recently enacted First Schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act, if found guilty of drug trafficking, the 22-year-old suspect may be penalized with a minimum of five years in prison and five strokes of the cane. The act also allows the possession or consumption of New Psychoactive Substances to be punished with a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and/or a $20,000 fine.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

On Thursday, Chester Bennington, lead singer of US rock band Linkin Park, died in his home in Los Angeles at the age of 41. The Los Angeles county coroner confirmed Bennington’s death; reportedly it was being investigated as a possible suicide.

A two-time Grammy award winner with the band, Chester Bennington joined Linkin Park when he was 23. Also featuring rapper Mike Shinoda, Linkin Park released their first album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000. The band went on to release six more albums featuring Bennington’s voice, including One More Light, which was released this year. The band was scheduled to go on a tour for One More Light, but it has been canceled.

Their song Crawling, from Hybrid Theory, won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. The band was also nominated for Best Rock Album and Best New Artist. A year after releasing Meteora, Linkin Park collaborated with rapper Jay-Z for the Collision Course EP in 2004 whose single Numb/Encore won a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Meteora has sold more than 27 million copies, which featured the hit song Numb.

In his statement, Warner Bros. Records CEO Cameron Strang said, “Chester Bennington was an artist of extraordinary talent and charisma, and a human being with a huge heart and a caring soul.” The Recording Academy President Neil Portnow said, “We have lost a truly dynamic member of the music community”.

In 2013, Bennington performed at the MusiCares MAP Fund benefit concert, whose aim was to aid addiction treatment. Born on March 20, 1976 in Phoenix, Arizona, to a nurse and a police detective, Bennington recounted being abused in his childhood, molested by an older friend over the course of several years starting when he was seven or eight. In a 2008 interview with Kerrang!, he said, “It destroyed my self-confidence […] Like most people, I was too afraid to say anything. I didn’t want people to think I was gay or that I was lying. It was a horrible experience.”

In an interview with Noisecreep in 2009, he said, “I don’t have a problem with people knowing that I had a drinking problem. That’s who I am, and I’m kind of lucky in a lot of ways because I get to do something about it.” Of the band’s Grammy-winning song Crawling, Bennington said the song was “about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol.”

His first marriage ended in a divorce, and he said, “I knew that I had a drinking problem, a drug problem, and that parts of my personal life were crazy, but I didn’t realise how much that was affecting the people around me until I got a good dose of ‘Here’s-what-you’re-really-like.'” In 2011, he told The Guardian, “When I was young, getting beaten up and pretty much raped was no fun. No one wants that to happen to you and honestly, I don’t remember when it started […] My God, no wonder I became a drug addict. No wonder I just went completely insane for a little while.”

Bennington died on the day his singer friend Chris Cornell would have turned 53. Cornell hanged himself earlier this year. After Cornell’s death, Bennington said, “I can’t imagine a world without you in it.”

Bennington is survived by his six children and his wife, Talinda Bentley, whom he married in 2006.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

A small group of people gathered in protest outside the New South Wales Parliament in Sydney, Australia at midday. The group was protesting the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill, calling upon Premier Iemma not to support the laws. The protest was organised by the New South Wales Greens and was addressed by several speakers, including Lee Rhiannon, an elected Greens parliamentarian from the New South Wales Legislative Council.

One protester carried a placard which read: “Terrorism Laws=Fascism!” She compared the proposed legislation to the 1933 German Enabling Act, saying “It is the most basic rule of democracy is that you have the right to legal representation and Hitler took that away, that was Habeas corpus as it was called, in 1933 legislation and from that moment on thats when everything began. They could remove people, anyone who objected anyone who was a witness, anyone who tried to find out what happened could also be removed.”

“John Howard’s terror law would not make Australia safer”, Lee Rhiannon said in her speech, “They will not stop a London style bombing occurring in Australia and that’s what we need to remember. This is another one of John Howards’s lies. Let’s remember weapons of mass destruction, (and) children overboard.”

The Australian government introduced anti-terror laws after September 11, and has sought to extend those laws in the wake of the London train bombings.

The government claimed in a media release today that it has this week received specific information about a terrorist threat to Australia.

“The Government has received specific intelligence and police information this week which gives cause for serious concern about a potential terrorist threat. The detail of this intelligence has been provided to the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Minister for Homeland Security,” the release said.

The government claims that the new bill is intended to improve the ability of intelligence services and the police to counter this threat.

“The Government is satisfied on the advice provided to it that the immediate passage of this bill would strengthen the capacity of law enforcement agencies to effectively respond to this threat,” the release said.

Dr Andrew Lynch, Project Director of the Terrorism and Law project at the Gilbert & Tobin Centre of Public Law, has said that Rhiannon has raised some valid issues regarding some of the provisions in the proposed legislation.

“It is difficult to see how many of [the provisions] will enhance our security. For example, the bans on free speech will only drive inciting and hateful messages under ground which must make the job of security forces harder in identifying real threats. The restrictions on family members knowing about the detention of their children is not conceivably going to improve our safety. There is a lot to be said for the view that depriving people of their liberty on the basis only of ‘reasonable suspicion’ might well fuel feelings of alienation amongst some groups which could be harnessed by extremists,” Dr Lynch said.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Rick Morelli is running for the NDP in the Ontario provincial election, in the Vaughan riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.