Thursday, August 7, 2008

Across Easter weekend Wellington, New Zealand was host to Rock2Wgtn, an international two-day hard rock festival. Large crowds showed up at Westpac Stadium to see the various acts. The world has never seen an event of this kind before, and New Zealand has never had any kind of major rock festival or multi-day music festival.

Day one featured three theatrical acts. Finnish band Lordi, known for their monster costumes, opened the night. They were followed by the US shock rocker Alice Cooper, whose themed set included the horror theatrics regularly associated with him and a hanging stunt he recently restarted after a gallows collapse nearly killed him two decades ago. The night was headlined by the distinctively costumed band KISS, complete with their famed black-and-white makeup.

The first major act on the stage on day two was the American hard rock/glam metal band Poison. After Poison, British act Whitesnake took to the stage and performed their set to the crowd. British-born American rocker Ozzy Osbourne, who, as well as a solo career, fronts the world-famous Black Sabbath, was the second night’s headline act.

The festival’s entertainment did not stop at the six main acts. There was also support performances from three New Zealand bands – The Symphony of Screams, The Valves and Sonic Altar. Their sets were accompanied by a special effects package from award-winning studio Weta Workshops, who are known for their work on movies such as The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. This came in the form of ‘Drusila the Dragon’, which rose up to a height of six foot and wigspan and moved for the audience, shining lasers from its eyes and breathing red smoke. Flame Fire Productions were hired to put on a fire show featuring several dancers alongside the performers. Also performing were six local guitarists and a group of ‘zombie‘ cheerleaders.

Wikinews was able to secure two exclusive interviews with those responsible behind the scenes for putting on such a show. Weta Workshop’s Philip Sharpe, who supervised the project and Milly Bea, current manageress of Flame Fire Productions, discussed their roles. In the first installment, Milly Bea tells us about “a definite highlight” for Flame and lets us know everything from her thoughts on Gene Simmons’s tongue to just how much kerosene it takes to put on a fire show at a rock fest.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

In appearances before Congress on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a top military official are expected to underscore decreased violence in Iraq. But they are likely to face strong questioning from lawmakers about ongoing war costs.

When President George W. Bush‘s budget for the 2009 fiscal year was sent to Congress this week, Secretary Gates defended the $515 billion request from the Pentagon.

In the overall figure, he noted, are billions of dollars to support U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the administration’s global war on terrorism. “A $70 billion emergency bridge fund that would cover war costs into the next calendar year,” he said.

The story behind that figure is the ongoing struggle between President Bush and the Democratic-controlled United States Congress over war funding.

Last year, the president asked for about $190 billion in a supplemental request outside the regular defense budget for war costs in the current 2008 fiscal year. The amount approved by Congress, just over $86 billion, left a large gap.

When Gates and military Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen appear before the House and Senate armed services committees, they will be pressed for harder cost projections, as Congress continues to assess the impact for the U.S. economy of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

White House Budget Director Jim Nussle was asked this week if the Bush administration has a realistic hope it can obtain its Pentagon regular budget and supplemental war funding requests from an opposition Congress. “It’s worth whatever we need to spend and we have made, I think, a very careful determination of what that is. So, I don’t believe it is just a negotiation point. I think it is what it takes for us to be safe, and to be the kind of super power that can maintain that safety,” he said.

Asked why budget figures do not appear to reflect a reduction in costs because of the eventual withdrawal of about 30,000 troops from Iraq to pre-military surge levels, expected to be complete later this year, Nussle would only refer reporters to the Pentagon.

And while the question of troop levels will be a key topic for lawmakers, in the context of questioning on the overall Pentagon budget, Gates may not provide much in the way of enlightenment.

Media reports quoting testimony prepared for the House and Senate hearings say he will point to what he calls significant variables weighing against making any realistic estimate of how much Congress may be asked for in the final year of the Bush administration.

Based on numerous supplemental requests for Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, members of Congress expect the $70 billion bridge fund to be followed by additional requests to sustain U.S. forces.

As for the $100 billion or so in 2008 supplemental funds that has been held up by bickering between Capitol Hill and the White House, congressional Democrats are looking to testimony in April from the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.

That will provide Congress with an update on progress by Iraqi forces toward shouldering more of the security burden, what that means for U.S. troop numbers, and what Americans can expect to be paying as President Bush leaves office and a new administration takes over in 2009.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

A new study by a professor at the University of Oxford has concluded that attending nursery school does not have harmful effects upon “the vast majority” of children under two years old. The research contrasts with the views of other writers in the field, who argue that pre-school children achieve the best results when cared for by their parents full-time.

Kathy Sylva, Professor of Educational Psychology at the university, has based her findings upon data from the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education Project. This has been running since 1996, tracking the development of 3,000 children to discover the effects upon their development of pre-school care and education.

Sylva told The Sunday Times that “[a] lot of parents worry unnecessarily about this issue but my research shows that the vast majority of children are not impaired on any measure by attending nursery under the age of two”, although she admits that there is an increased risk for children from deprived background, and for boys. Those attending better-quality nurseries go on to make better relationships when they start school, she says, and urges parents to check the standards of nurseries for themselves.

Her conclusions come in the wake of a vast expansion in nursery care provision in the United Kingdom in recent years, aimed at getting mothers of young children back to work. One study states that 5% of “middle-class” parents in Britain put their children in full-time nursery care.

According to others such as the child psychologist Oliver James, however, full-time care by parents gives the best results for children. James states that there is evidence that nursery care is “highly stressful and can be harmful”, since levels of the hormone cortisol double after one hour in day care, and raised levels can be detected for some months afterwards. Sylva agrees, though, that some children who attend nursery before they are two are slightly more aggressive at primary school – a finding in line with other research – but says that this aggression disappears by the time the child reaches eleven.

Sylva, a Professorial Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, was awarded the OBE in 2008. She is a former special advisor to the UK House of Commons and the Scottish Parliament.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

About 30 workers at the Vestas wind turbine plant in Newport, Isle of Wight, England have occupied their factory in protest against the upcoming closure of the plant. The factory, the main site for the manufacture of turbines for wind power in the United Kingdom, is scheduled to close at the end of July, bringing with it the loss of 625 jobs; Vestas is a major employer on the Isle of Wight, which has a population of around 140,000.

The workers, most of whom are not affiliated with any union, began their occupation around 7pm.

Speaking via mobile phone from the factory, “Mark”, a worker in Vestas’s finishing shop who prefers not to give any last name for fear of management reprisals, called the atmosphere “really good.” “It’s all right, we’re getting a lot of support”, he said.

Calling Vestas the “world leader” in the manufacture of wind turbines, Mark stated that the goal of the occupation as “asking the government to nationalise us” as “Vestas aren’t willing to keep our factory open”. The plant is being closed despite rising profits at the company, which is focusing on sales in China in response to lower demand in Northern Europe. According to a report by the Guardian, the low demand in the United Kingdom is the result of the long and unpredictable planning process associated with constructing wind farms in Britain.

Mark told Wikinews that the workers at Vestas have received messages of support from members of the SWP, the TUC, and Unite. Members of the Socialist Party are also taking part in the industrial action and the party has announced its support for the occupation. According to Mark, the Vestas workers were “inspired” to occupy the factory through contacts with occupation organisers from the Visteon plant in Belfast, where workers staged a weeks-long sit-in in April of this year. Mark said that the Visteon workers told the Vestas workers that an occupation “is something we should do to stand up for ourselves.”

Mark closed by thanking the public for its support, saying “we’ve got to keep on doing this sort of work — it’s for all our futures”