leskovarlm.com

Saturday, June 11, 2005

The finance ministers of the G8, the world’s eight richest countries, after years of pressure from wide coalitions of human rights campaigners, such as the Committee for the abolition of third world debt (CADTM), have agreed to a deal to relieve the debts of 18 of the poorest countries in the world, but have not yet published the full details.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the African Development Fund will write off all of the money owed to them by the selected countries. However, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) will not cancel debts owed to them by heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guyana, Vietnam, and Laos.

The countries to receive debt cancellation from the IMF, WB and the African Development Fund are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

The deal, devised by the United Kingdom, could potentially free up government revenue for domestic spending on things such as education and health services.

The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Fund will write off all of the money owed to them by the above listed nations. A total of $40bn will be cleared, which will save debt repayments of $1.5bn a year.

CADTM argues that this is a negligible effort by the rich countries, since $1.5bn a year is extremely small compared to the $350bn the G8 devote to farming subsidies or the $700bn they spend in military expenditure each year. Moreover, these 18 countries only represent about 5% of the population of developing countries.

Another twenty countries may become eligible to have their debts cleared if they meet criteria decided by G8 finance ministries.

According to G8 representatives, the main criteria are the reduction of corruption and better government. According to critics, such as the CADTM, the criteria include the privatisation of natural resources and of strategic economic sectors to the benefit of transnational corporations, higher costs of health care and education through privatisation, a rise in VAT, free flow of capital, which leads to capital leaving the country as shown by several UNCTAD reports, lower tariff protection, which leads to thousands of small and middle producers losing their livelihoods because they cannot compete with imported goods.

The CADTM claims that the G8 agreement can solve neither the issue of the debt nor the issue of poverty since it bears on only 2% of the external debt of developing countries and demand an immediate and complete cancellation of the public external debt of all developing countries, the burden of the debt being a major obstacle to meeting fundamental human needs.

Other groups, including charities, have similarly stated that the debts of 62 countries need to be cleared if the UN wants to meet its target of halving world poverty.

Fourteen of the countries to receive debt relief are in sub-Saharan Africa.

The alleviation of third world debt has been a lifelong ambition of Gordon Brown, the current UK chancellor, and he has used all of his political power and status to push for this agreement in the G8 group.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

In a Rolling Stone magazine interview on Wednesday, United States President Barack Obama responded to recent backlash over his alleged policy shift on medical marijuana.

In January 2004, then-Illinois Senator Obama said, “The war on drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our nation’s marijuana laws.” Since he took office as president, over 170 raids have been conducted on medical marijuana facilities across the U.S.

In the U.S. certain states have voted to allow for the use of marijuana for medical purposes, although it is still illegal to possess and consume under federal law. This has led to the recent raids and seizures on dispensaries by authorities with the federal government.

“What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana,” President Obama said. “I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law.”

On April 2, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) raided Oaksterdam University in Oakland, California. Oaksterdam provides courses in which students can learn about the horticulture and business aspects of the medical marijuana industry, but does not distribute marijuana. Authorities confiscated marijuana plants, records, computers and seized bank accounts held by that department of the university.

“In many respects [the raids in California] are not a surprise considering that these dispensaries and cultivation centers are in violation of federal law, and always have been.” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Along with the advocates at NORML, multiple lawmakers have written letters to President Obama criticizing his alleged shift on policy. The lawmakers have also called for the federal government to allow states to regulate themselves.

While medical marijuana is legal in California, as well as sixteen other states including Washington D.C., the Controlled Substances Act classifies marijuana as an illegal substance. California state law requires dispensaries to run as non-profit, and those who do make a profit are subject to getting raided by federal and local authorities. “If you grow a small amount at home or buy some off the street then he doesn’t care, that’s what they’ve said,” St. Pierre said.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Andrew McAvoy is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Windsor-Tecumseh 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.

Featured articles are selected by the community to represent the best of Wikinews. See the Featured Article Candidates page for nominations and discussions of candidate articles for this page. Or, subscribe to the RSS feed!

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Monday, June 14, 2021

Arthur Oliver Kostendt, a candidate running in the mayoral election of the US city of Cleveland, Ohio set to take place November 2, discussed his campaign and policies with Wikinews this spring.

According to Cleveland Scene, 29-year-old Kostendt is a member of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio Republican Party but has referred to his campaign as “casual”. According to his web site’s personal biography, he was a cadet for the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), scout platoon leader for the 2nd Squadron of the 107th Cavalry Regiment of the Ohio Army National Guard and logistics officer for the 1st Battalion of the 145th Armored Regiment. He served in Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and assisted coalition force detachments in Southeast Asia.

Kostendt is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and summa cum laude graduate of Cleveland State University. He writes he uses an apostrophe to abbreviate his middle name as “Arthur O’Kostendt” instead of the customary period after the O to emphasise his Irish heritage.

A poll published May 5 by Baldwin Wallace University, which does not feature Mr Kostendt, has Dennis Kucinich and Basheer Jones leading in the mayoral race by 17.8 and 13.3 points, respectively, with a margin of error of up to five per cent either way. 48% of those surveyed were undecided. Incumbent mayor Frank G. Jackson, who won the 2017 Cleveland mayoral election with 59% of the vote, is eligible for a fifth term but announced on May 6 he would retire.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

File:El Maco.jpg

McDonald’s, the international fast food restaurant chain, will cease all operations in Iceland by the end of October.

The company blames the closure of the nation’s three outlets on drastically increased costs of importing its food ingredients, which mainly came from Germany. McDonald’s corporation says the current economic slump is to blame for rising costs, along with the “unique operational complexity” of keeping them open.

The restaurant, with its distinctive Golden Arches, began its Icelandic operations in 1993. Its outlets were operated by Lyst, a franchising company owned by Jon Gardar Ogmundsson. There are no plans to reopen any of the locations.

“[Stores have] never been this busy before… but at the same time profits have never been lower. It just makes no sense. For a kilo[gram] of onion[s], imported from Germany, I’m paying the equivalent of a bottle of good whisky,” said one Gardar Ogmundsson, the owner of the firm Lyst, to the BBC.

Lyst hopes to operate a new chain of restaurants, which will be supplied by domestic rather than imported food products.

McDonald’s, which operates in 119 countries globally, previously closed its sole retail outlet in Barbados in 1996 after only six months in operation, and withdrew from an additional seven countries in 2000 — including Bolivia — to reduce costs.

Saturday, April 9, 2022

Thursday evening, a gunman shot dead three people and wounded at least nine others in an entertainment district of Tel Aviv, Israel, before being located and killed in a shootout with security forces early Friday.

Magen David Adom, the national emergency medical service, said it received its first report of the incident at 21:00 IST (1900 UTC). Victims were transported to three different hospitals. Two men were immediately pronounced dead, and another died of his injuries. Three people are listed in serious condition and another four suffered minor injuries.

The shootings started at a pub on Dizengoff Street where five victims were reported. Others were shot on J. L. Gordon Street and in the nearby area. Shin Bet security forces killed the alleged gunman after a shootout near a mosque in the southern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa. The suspect was identified as a 29-year-old Palestinian man from Jenin, a city in the north of the West Bank.

Speaking at HaKirya on Friday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett offered his condolences to the families of those killed on behalf of the nation and wished for the full recovery of the wounded. He said the perpetrator was not a member any organization but had received help and weapons. “Those who aid and abet terrorists need to know that the price they will pay is too high to bear”, he said.

Bennett claimed there were celebrations in Jenin after the news of the attack. “I saw the father of the terrorist inciting to more violence and being proud of his son the murderer,” he said. “We, as a people and a state, will all need patience and strong nerves, and to be alert. But above all we need great faith in the justice of our cause in this land.”

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement: “We are closely following developments and will continue to be in regular contact with our Israeli partners, with whom we stand resolutely in the face of senseless terrorism and violence.”

There were several attacks in Israel in the month of March, including a shooting in Bnei Brak, just east of Tel Aviv, which claimed the lives of five people.