Monday, October 20, 2008

In an interview with Público, a Spanish newspaper, the prime minister of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has stated that ” if there is a global recession, it seems logical to expect that Spain will enter the recession in 2009 .”

In the interview Zapatero also described the worldwide economic situation as “difficult.” He recognized that ” the developed countries are or are going to experience negative growth, and developing countries are also going to see falling growth; resulting in a worldwide loss of jobs.”

Regarding the global financial situation, Zapatero continued by saying that “the financial system is a part of the economy, a crucial part. We have a year-long financial crisis, which has had its most acute moment in the past two months, and I think now the financial markets are beginning to recover.”

Asked about whether it would be desirable to another plan to help those overwhelmed by the size of their mortgage, Zapatero reiterated the falls in the Euro Interbank Offered Rate .

Zapatero then claimed that the average Spanish citizen would see their mortgage decrease by €28 a month (€330 per year) as result of the recent drops in interest rate, lead by seven central banks, including the European Central Bank which covers Spain, dropped their interest rate by 0.5%.

The prime minister then said that he was pleased with the role of Spain in the recent summits discussing the financial crisis, before adding that he believes the European Union will lead the way in solving the current issues in the markets.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Wikinews correspondent J.J. Liu spoke with Technological University Dublin (TUD) senior lecturer at the School of Surveying & Construction Management, Dr Lorcan Sirr on Friday regarding the supply of housing in the Republic of Ireland and relevant parallels across the rest of Europe, as well as recent developments by the government and private sector that are causing a rise in rents and home prices in the Irish real estate market.

Dr Sirr is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and has provided commentary to Irish radio station Newstalk, national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and various other publications. In addition to being a chartered planning and development surveyor and assessor to the Society of Chartered Surveyors, Dr Sirr is a Peace Commissioner and former external examiner for the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, according to his profile on Worky.

Dr Sirr was a lecturer and former head of research for the Faculty of the Built Environment at the Dublin Institute of Technology, which entered a merger with two partner institutes to become TUD January 1, 2019. He received his bachelor’s degree in estate management at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom, and master’s degree in urban design and PhD in town planning at the University of Manchester. He has a second master’s in literature from KU Leuven, Belgium, and speaks French.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Romanian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has discussed its objectives for the future in a seminar about informational services development. Romanian Prime Minister C?lin Popescu-T?riceanu, as well as the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Zsolt Nagy, presented the government’s major targets for the expansion and development of information services.

These include the sale of the government’s remaining shares in telecommunication corporations Romtelecom and Postelecom, the relaunching of mobile phone operator Cosmorom and the maintaining of tax breaks for programmers. Another important objective was the awarding of more 3G licenses to mobile phone operators and more comprehensive online tax payment services. Connex, Romania’s second largest mobile phone operator, launched a comprehensive 3G service this month, and more companies are expected to follow in the future.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

The following is the sixth and final edition of a monthly series chronicling the U.S. 2016 presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

In this month’s edition on the campaign trail: the Free & Equal Foundation holds a presidential debate with three little-known candidates; three additional candidates give their final pleas to voters; and past Wikinews interviewees provide their electoral predictions ahead of the November 8 election.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Jim Chapman is running for the Progressive Conservative of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the London-Fanshawe 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.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Sunday, July 3, 2005

A grandfather and his grandson have died off the coast of North Wales, UK, after their sailing dinghy was overwhelmed and capsized in rough seas. They were with a party of four who had been angling from a 4.6 m boat.

At 4pm local time on Saturday the Holyhead Coastguard received an emergency call from the Star Reader saying they had found a capsized dinghy adrift three and a half miles north of Puffin Island, off the east coast of the Isle of Anglesey.

A third vessel, the Sara Jane, also attended the scene to allow a first aider on board to render assistance.

A RAF search and rescue helicopter was scrambled and the Beaumaris lifeboat launched to effect a rescue effort. Two people were found clinging to the boat but two more had been washed away. A rapid search recovered both of them.

The rescue helicopter lowered its winchman onto the dinghy to begin CPR on the nine year old boy before he was winched onboard. He was flown to nearby Bangor Hospital, but later died.

The Beaumaris lifeboat raced the grandfather – also suffering serious hypothermia – ashore to a waiting ambulance, but he too died shortly afterwards. The lifeboat also carried an uninjured member of the party ashore, while the helicopter returned to rescue a second young boy.

The father and a twelve year old boy survived. All had been wearing life jackets, but the sea was running at 1.5 m waves in a 45 km/h wind at the time.

It is believed the two dead had been in the water for at least three hours before they were recovered, and died from the effects of hypothermia.