Thursday, July 7, 2016

On Monday, Vicente del Bosque announced that he drop out from his post as a manager of the Spanish national football team. His contact is to expire at the end of July.

del Bosque said, “I will continue my duties until my contract runs out on 31 July and then I’m leaving. My decision is irreversible”. In UEFA Euro 2016, Spain lost 2–0 in the Last 16 knockout stage against Italy.

In his eight years of management, Vicente del Bosque became the most decorated Spanish coach winning the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa and defending the European Championship in 2012. Before del Bosque’s tenure, the 2008 Euro trophy was spain’s first major trophy in the last 44 years which Spain won under Luis Aragonés, Bosque’s predecessor.

del Bosque is to become a Royal Spanish Football Federation member. He has more than a 75% win record with 87 wins in 114 matches. 70 players including Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Piqué, Álvaro Morata, and goalkeeper David de Gea debuted for Spain under del Bosque.

Before Bosque, Helmut Schön was the only manager to have won both FIFA World Cup and EURO Championship.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne delivered the budget today, an annually-held audit of the country’s finances deciding how taxpayers’ money should be spent. He set out plans to boost the housing market in his fourth budget, as well as stating the economy will grow by 0.6% — half his prediction four months ago.

George Osborne revealed plans to improve the housing market, including a “Help to Buy” shared equity scheme which would offer buyers who can place a 5% deposit on a new house, a 20% loan to buy it. He said: “This is a budget for those who aspire to own their own home”. He also offered a new Mortgage Guarantee, created in conjunction with mortgage lenders — the scheme would allow them to offer loans to homeowners without the need for a large deposit and offer guarantees to support up to £130bn of lending for three years beginning in 2014.

As a measure to attract investment to the British economy, he announced to reduce corporation tax from 21% to 20% taking effect from April 2015. The rate of corporation tax has fallen from 28% in 2010 to the current level of 21%. The United Kingdom is to have lower rates of corporation tax than the USA at 40%, France at 33%, and Germany at 29%.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) stated the government debt reduction programme to reduce the budget deficit will miss its targets. The government has forecast the total public sector debt will begin to fall by the financial year 2015/2016, while OBR says national debt will reach a high of 85.6% of GDP, £1.58 trillion, in 2016/17. Osborne defended the government efforts to reduce the deficit and said: “Our judgement has since been supported by the IMF, the OECD and the Governor of the Bank of England.”

In response to the Budget speech, the Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband said: “At the worst possible time for the country. It’s a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor […] Debt is higher in every year of this Parliament than he forecast at the last Budget. He is going to borrow £200 billion more than he planned.”

The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls said to The Independent, “They are borrowing £245bn more in this Parliament, we said all along …said this two years ago, if they had moved more quickly with a sensible, targeted package of measures to kick-start the economy, which would have meant at that time more borrowing for a VAT [Value Added Tax] cut to bring forward housing investment, then we would have got the economy growing and the deficit coming down.”

The Business Secretary Vince Cable told the BBC in an interview, the “age of austerity” would probably end within the current decade, but made no more definite forecast.

The head of the British Federation of Small Businesses, John Walker, said: “The Budget opens the door for small businesses to grow and create jobs. The Chancellor has pulled out all the stops with a wide ranging package of measures to support small business. […] [W]e are pleased to see the scrapping of the 3p fuel duty due in September”.

Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Unite the Union, criticized the budget for not helping working families. He said: “This is a Budget for the few by the few that attacks the many. Millionaires are days away from getting a £40,000 tax cut from the Tories, but George Osborne is using the budget to attack hard-working public sector workers. The worst chancellor in British history has gone further by giving big business another tax cut while staff caring for the sick get pay cuts. […] [H]e should have raised the national minimum wage by £1 and drop the senseless plan to give millionaires a tax break in a few days’ time”.

Monday, February 4, 2008

For the first time in Texas’s history, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is conducting an online vote to help decide which license plate design the state will use beginning in early 2009.

The week-long vote is being held at dot.state.tx.us. It started Monday at noon and will end on February 11 at the same time. Anyone can vote for one of five license plate designs, including the current design.

The designs are:

• Traditional Texas — This simple design features blue highlights at the top and bottom and a gold star.
• Lone Star Texas — This design uses a mountainous landscape under a bright, cloudy sky as its background. In the top left corner is a white star amid a splash of red and blue.
• Natural Texas — The background is a field filled with wildflowers.
• New Texas — This red, white and blue design features a skyline composed of landmarks from major Texas cities including Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. A large gold star is faintly visible in the background.
• My Texas — This is the current license plate that was introduced in 2000. It features silhouettes of a desert landscape with an oil derrick and a man on horseback, as well as a starry night sky with a space shuttle.

All of the designs incorporate the state’s name, an outline of the state, and the state’s nickname, “The Lone Star State”. TxDOT says they took legibility and reflectivity into account when making the designs, in order to promote safety and law enforcement.

The decision to allow a public vote was made because the state was running out of six-character combinations to assign to drivers. The new license plates will have seven characters, regardless of the public’s decision.

“By the end of this year, we will be out of license plate combinations for the three letters and three numbers that we currently put on the general-issue plate,” said Rebecca Davio, director of Vehicle Titles and Registration. “Because we need to change the plate, we thought it was the perfect time to invite Texans to participate in a design selection.”

According to TxDOT, it took 33 years to exhaust the number of six-character combinations, and using current population growth figures, they project it will take 35 years to run out of seven-character combinations.

The Texas Transportation Commission must give final approval of the design. TxDOT says the commission is “enthusiastic” about giving the public an opportunity to vote for the new design.

TxDOT considered allowing the public to submit designs, but ultimately decided that it would use a “substantial amount of state-worker time” and wouldn’t be a “prudent use of taxpayer money”.

At the time of this writing, an unofficial vote count showed the “Lone Star Texas” design in first place with over 22,000 votes. “Natural Texas” was second with over 14,000, followed by “Traditional Texas”, “New Texas”, and the current design “My Texas”.

Friday, November 23, 2007

All passengers and crew from the stricken Canadian cruise ship MS Explorer are safe. Since broadcasting a call for help at approximately 05:24 UTC, a number of vessels in the area have raced to rescue her 156 passengers and crew. Four vessels led by the cruise ship the Endeavour were the first to arrive and pick up the evacuees from lifeboats and RIBs, later being transferred to the Norwegian ship, MS Nordnorge.

In less than one hour all passengers and crew, said to be cold but in good health, were safely transferred to the Nordnorge, and that vessel is now heading towards King George Island, three or four hours steaming away. Speaking on the BBC’s News 24, the captain of the Nordnorge said that he was heading for the Chilean research station, from where it is expected that all can be flown back to the South American mainland.

Off the South Shetland Islands the ship struck an underwater object (believed to be a submerged iceberg ) the Explorer developed a fist sized crack and began taking on water. Initially said to be listing to starboard at 25° the Argentine Coast Guard reports that the list has since increased to 45° and the vessel is expected to sink soon. Concerns now turn to possible environmental concerns and damage.

The rescue effort was an international affair involving the coast guards of Argentina, USA, Chile and the UK. The UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency received notification from the US Coast Guard between 5.30-6.00 asking for the Explorer’s emergency data plans.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Conduit, a subsidiary of the US directory assistance organisation kgb, is to create six hundred new jobs in the Welsh capital Cardiff by the end of 2012. Conduit is currently searching for 320 employees and intends to employ a further 280 this year.

In a statement, First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones described the news as “yet another indication that Welsh government policies are having a beneficial effect supporting the economy and creating jobs during these difficult times”, saying he was “delighted that Conduit is yet again expanding its operations in Wales.” Edwina Hart, Minister for Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science, said she was “pleased that using the economic levers we have at our disposal, such as creating sector-specific enterprise zones, we continue to attract and retain world class business in Wales.”

The new employees will work at Fusion Point, an office area in Cardiff city centre. Prior to this announcement, Conduit already had in excess of 1900 employees within three Welsh bases in Cardiff Gate, Swansea, and Cardiff city centre. This new contract has been created in association with a residential care service provided by British Gas.

Conduit Europe chief executive officer Denis Creighton said of the company’s decision: “Wales delivers our best performance figures period. And that’s why we’re planning to focus future growth here.”

Friday, September 7, 2012

London, England — On Wednesday, Wikinews interviewed Duncan Campbell, one of the creators of wheelchair rugby.

((Laura Hale)) You’re Duncan Campbell, and you’re the founder of…

Duncan Campbell: One of the founders of wheelchair rugby.

((Laura Hale)) And you’re from Canada, eh?

Duncan Campbell: Yes, I’m from Canada, eh! (laughter)

((Laura Hale)) Winnipeg?

Duncan Campbell: Winnipeg, Manitoba.

((Laura Hale)) You cheer for — what’s that NHL team?

Duncan Campbell: I cheer for the Jets!

((Laura Hale)) What sort of Canadian are you?

Duncan Campbell: A Winnipeg Jets fan! (laughter)

((Laura Hale)) I don’t know anything about ice hockey. I’m a Chicago Blackhawks fan.

((Hawkeye7)) Twenty five years ago…

Duncan Campbell: Thirty five years ago!

((Laura Hale)) They said twenty five in the stadium…

Duncan Campbell: I know better.

((Hawkeye7)) So it was 1977.

((Laura Hale)) You look very young.

Duncan Campbell: Thank you. We won’t get into how old I am.

((Hawkeye7)) So how did you invent the sport?

Duncan Campbell: I’ve told this story so many times. It was a bit of a fluke in a way, but there were five of us. We were all quadriplegic, that were involved in sport, and at that time we had the Canadian games for the physically disabled. So we were all involved in sports like table tennis or racing or swimming. All individual sports. And the only team sport that was available at that time was basketball, wheelchair basketball. But as quadriplegics, with hand dysfunction, a bit of arm dysfunction, if we played, we rode the bench. We’d never get into the big games or anything like that. So we were actually going to lift weights one night, and the volunteer who helped us couldn’t make it. So we went down to the gym and we started throwing things around, and we tried a few things, and we had a volleyball. We kind of thought: “Oh! This is not bad. This is a lot of fun.” And we came up with the idea in a night. Within one night.

((Hawkeye7)) So all wheelchair rugby players are quadriplegics?

Duncan Campbell: Yes. All wheelchair rugby players have to have a disability of some kind in all four limbs.

((Laura Hale)) When did the classification system for wheelchair rugby kick in?

Duncan Campbell: It kicked in right away because there was already a classification system in place for wheelchair basketball. We knew basketball had a classification system, and we very consciously wanted to make that all people with disabilities who were quadriplegics got to play. So if you make a classification system where the people with the most disability are worth more on the floor, and you create a system where there are only so many points on the floor, then the people with more disability have to play. And what that does is create strategy. It creates a role.

((Hawkeye7)) Was that copied off wheelchair basketball?

Duncan Campbell: To some degree, yes.

((Laura Hale)) I assume you’re barracking for Canada. Have they had any classification issues? That made you

Duncan Campbell: You know, I’m not going to… I can’t get into that in a major way in that there’s always classification issues. And if you ask someone from basketball, there’s classification issues. If you ask someone from swimming… There’s always classification issues. The classifiers have the worst job in the world, because nobody’s ever satisfied with what they do. But they do the best they can. They’re smart. They know what they’re doing. If the system needs to change, the athletes will, in some way, encourage it to change.

((Laura Hale)) Do you think the countries that have better classifiers… as someone with an Australian perspective they’re really good at classification, and don’t get theirs overturned, whereas the Americans by comparison have had a number of classification challenges coming in to these games that they’ve lost. Do you think that having better classifiers makes a team better able to compete at an international level?

Duncan Campbell: What it does is ensures that you practice the right way. Because you know the exact classifications of your players then you’re going to lineups out there that are appropriate and fit the classification. If your classifications are wrong then you may train for six months with a lineup that becomes invalid when that classification. So you want to have good classifiers, and you want to have good classes.

((Laura Hale)) When you started in 1977, I’ve seen pictures of the early wheelchairs. I assume that you were playing in your day chair?

Duncan Campbell: Yes, all the time. And we had no modifications. And day chairs at that time were folding chairs. They were Earjays or Stainless. That’s all the brands there were. The biggest change in the game has been wheelchairs.

((Laura Hale)) When did you retire?

Duncan Campbell: I never retired. Still play. I play locally. I play in the club level all the time.

((Laura Hale)) When did you get your first rugby wheelchair?

Duncan Campbell: Jesus, that’s hard for me to even think about. A long time ago. I would say maybe twenty years ago.

((Laura Hale)) Were you involved in creating a special chair, as Canadians were pushing the boundaries and creating the sport?

Duncan Campbell: To a degree. I think everybody was. Because you wanted the chair that fit you. Because they are all super designed to an individual. Because it allows you to push better, allows you to turn better. Allows you to use your chair in better ways on the court. Like you’ve noticed that the defensive chairs are lower and longer. That’s because the people that are usually in a defensive chair have a higher disability, which means they have less balance. So they sit lower, which means they can use their arms better, and longer so they can put screens out and set ticks for those high point players who are carrying the ball. It’s very much strategic.

((Hawkeye7)) I’d noticed that in wheelchair basketball the low point player actually gets more court time…

Duncan Campbell: …because that allows the high point player to play. And its the same in this game. Although in this game there’s two ways to go. You can go a high-low lineup, which is potentially two high point players and two very low point players, which is what Australia does right now with Ryley Batt and the new kid Chris Bond. They have two high point players, and two 0.5 point players. It makes a very interesting scenario for, say, the US, who use four mid-point players. In that situation, all four players can carry the ball; in the Australian situation, usually only two of them can carry the ball.

((Laura Hale)) Because we know you are going soon, the all-important question: can Canada beat the Australians tonight?

Duncan Campbell: Of course they are. (laughter)

((Laura Hale)) Because Australians love to gamble, what’s your line on Canada?

Duncan Campbell: It’s not a big line! I’m not putting a big line on it! (laughter) I’d say it’s probably 6–5.

((Hawkeye7)) Is your colour commentary for the Canadian broadcast?

Duncan Campbell: That was for the IPC. I did the GB–US game this morning. I do the Sweden–Australia game tomorrow at two. And then I’m doing the US–France game on the last day.

((Laura Hale)) Are you happy with the level of coverage the Canadians are providing your sport?

Duncan Campbell: No.

((Laura Hale)) Thank you for an honest answer.

Duncan Campbell: Paralympic Sports TV is their own entity. They webcast, but they’re not a Canadian entity. Our Canadian television is doing… can I swear?

((Laura Hale)) Yeah! Go ahead!

Duncan Campbell: No! (laughter) They’re only putting on an hour a day. A highlight package, which to me is…

((Hawkeye7)) It’s better than the US.

Duncan Campbell: Yes, I’ve heard it’s better than the US. At the same time, it’s crap. You have here [in Great Britain], they’ve got it on 18 hours a day, and it’s got good viewership. When are we going to learn in North America that viewership is out there for it? How many times do we have to demonstrate it? We had the Paralympics in Vancouver two years ago, the Winter Paralympics, and we had crappy coverage there. There was an actual outburst demand to put the opening ceremonies on TV because they weren’t going to do it. And they had to do it, because everybody complained. So they did it, but they only did it in BC, in our home province, where they were holding it. The closing ceremonies they broadcast nationally because the demand was so high. But they still haven’t changed their attitudes.

((Laura Hale)) I have one last question: what did it mean for you when they had a Canadian flag bearer who was a wheelchair rugby player?

Duncan Campbell: I recruited that guy. It was fantastic. I recruited him. Found him playing hockey. And that guy has put in so much time and effort into the game. He absolutely deserves it. No better player.

((Laura Hale)) Thank you!

((Hawkeye7)) Thank you! Much appreciated.