Thursday, July 14, 2005

First Active has become the first financial institution to offer 100% mortgages in the Republic of Ireland. The bank previously offered 100% financing to professionals in finance and medicine, but is now to offer this product to anyone who can afford to meet the repayments.

The development is a huge boost for first time home buyers who have been struggling to get on the Irish property market in recent years due to the rapid increase in house prices. A typical first time buyer in Dublin with 92% financing would normally have to put down a deposit of €20,000-€30,000 in cash, but now have the option to produce no deposit.

First Active has said that 100% mortgages will be available across its entire range of mortgage products.

Note however that this is not necessarily an entirely positive development.

The United States and most of Europe have experienced a housing price bubble in recent years. A bubble occurs when buyers purchase a property not because its price is appropriate for its actual value but because they expect the price to significantly rise in the short term permitting resale with a profit.

In other words, the prices people pay for properties becomes divorced from the real value of the property; the purchase is speculative and depends purely upon the expectation that people will continue to buy properties in this way (e.g. without proper consideration of their real value).

The terrible weakness in this is that when the market corrects itself and prices fall to a level where properties are being priced at their actual realistic value, anyone holding a property loses a great deal of money, since the price they paid does not reflect the actual realistic value of the property.

This kind of shock to the housing market is extremely undesirable. Significant write downs in the value of property often significantly depress the economy as a whole.

Less than 100% mortgages force buyers to invest a significant amount of money in the act of purchasing their house, which tends to discourage purely speculative purchasing, thus helping to mediate house price bubbles.

With 100% financing, anyone who can meet repayments can speculatively purchase a property. This naturally encourages pricing bubbles.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Beijing’s city legislature has approved a bill, one year in the making, to safeguard the historical and cultural heritage of old Beijing. The new 41-article set of regulations will come into effect May 1, requiring the city to protect listed heritage sites and unlisted sites deemed of historical or cultural value. It also guarantees protection for the area within the city’s Second Ring Road.

Director of the Beijing Administrative Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Mei Ninghua, said “the most encouraging content of the regulations is that Beijing will pay more attention to protecting the old city’s landscape in its entirety, rather than just focussing on scattered heritage sites.” This means the old city layout, colours of buildings, and the names of houses and lanes will have legal protection.

“We took measures to protect the city’s siheyuan courtyard houses by tagging protection plates on more than 650 of them in 2003, preventing them from being demolished or damaged during the city’s massive housing reconstruction projects,” said Mei.

“Now the new regulations give legal buttress to the protection of siheyuan courtyard homes, as well as other unmovable ancient treasures, that have yet to be listed but are at risk of being demolished during urban renovation.”

Modern Beijing, capital of China for 850 years, was built by Mongul Emporer Kublai Khan in 1267 AD. In the vicinity of the current city once was Ji (?), the capital of the State of Yan (?), a power of the Warring States Period – but it has been lost in the mists of time.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

A series of large explosions have occurred close to Hemel Hempstead Hertfordshire, UK. The source of the explosions has been confirmed as the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal (HOSL), Hemel Hempstead, known locally as the Buncefield complex. Up to 150 fire fighters are reported to be at the scene with 10 fire appliances and 1 specialist foamer.

The first ‘blast’ was heard near Hemel Hempstead on Sunday 11 Dec at 6 am. Further smaller explosions followed at 6:24am , 6:26am, 6:30am. BBC News 24 reported an additional, fourth large explosion. Hertfordshire Police Constabulary are currently treating the explosion as an accident.

Reports say the explosion, which registered 2.4 on the Richter scale, was heard as far away as Oxford, and Whitehall, Central London which is 60km (38 miles) away. Eyewitness statements report that the explosion was heard from at least 160km (100 miles) away and as far away as France and The Netherlands. Pilots reported noticing the blast from the North Sea and the West Country area of the UK. The M1 motorway which runs close by has been closed in both directions near the blast which is causing travel chaos as other roads become congested.

Malcom Stewart, a BBC News24 eyewitness who is a tanker driver for the site has reported that the site supplies several oil companies and is a joint operation between Total UK and Texaco, it is also used by BP, Shell and the British Pipeline association. The complex is not a refinery but a storage facility for refined petroleum awaiting distribution to airports and filling stations. The eyewitness reports that the depot has approximately 20 tanks which can hold about 3 million gallons (11 million litres or 70,000 barrels) each. Another News24 eyewitness has just reported that he has seen at least 5 of these tanks on fire.

The depot operates on a 24 hour basis and is split into 2 parts – aviation fuel and domestic fuel. A number of eyewitnesses have reported on UK news that the aviation fuel side appears to be the part of the site that has been affected.

Local authorities were not immediately available for comment but there have been reports of casualties.

Some reports on live television state that, “Several other neighbours said they did see a plane go into the depot.” BBC News 24 were also discussing the idea a possible plane crash as the cause of the explosions. Hertfordshire police have now gone on the record to say that there is no plane involved (BBC News24).

The police have issued a contact number 0800 096 0095 and asked that people do not call the emergency services in Hertfordshire directly unless it is an emergency.

In addition to being an oil storage depot, it is a major hub on the UK oil pipeline network with pipelines to Killingholme Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR), Humberside (10 inch), Merseyside (10 and 12 inch), Coryton on the Thames Estuary (14 inch) and Heathrow (6 and 8 inch) and Gatwick airports radiating from it.

The disaster is believed to be the worst explosion at a petrochemical plant in the UK since the Flixborough disaster of 1974.Hertfordshire’s Chief Fire Officer Roy Wilsher said: “This is possibly the largest incident of its kind in peacetime Europe.”

A firefighting press officer said that they are stock piling foam from neighboring regions for a prolonged attach which they hope will stop the spread of the fire, however, the inferno itself will have to burn out which could take between 24 hours and a few days.

Despite the authorities saying that there is no need to panic buy petrol, filling stations have had above average queues since this morning and some small garages have ran out.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has visited the scene.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005A landmark study comparing effectiveness in reducing major depression of two forms of initial treatment — cognitive therapy which involves discussing thought processes with a qualified counselor, vs medication — has revealed that both forms of therapy reduce depression, but that the benefits of cognitive therapy last longer than those of medication. The study finding contradicts current treatment guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

The 16-week study, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University, was the largest trial yet undertaken to resolve the years-old debate. Two-hundred-and-forty patients with moderate-to-severe depression were given one or other of the treatments, or a purposely-ineffective placebo. Study representatives described the two treatments about equally effective — both much more effective than the placebo — but with the positive effect of talk-therapy lasting longer.

In fact, the cognitive therapy group saw only as many relapses as a another group that had continued to receive drug therapy.

“We believe that cognitive therapy might have more lasting effects because it equips patients with the tools they need to learn how to manage their problems and emotions,” said Robert DeRubeis, professor and chair of Penn’s Department of Psychology. “Pharmaceuticals, while effective, offer no long term cure for the symptoms of depression. For many people, cognitive therapy might prove to be the preferred form of treatment.”

“Medication is often an appropriate treatment, but drugs have drawbacks, such as side effects or a diminished efficacy over time,” DeRubeis said. “Patients with depression are often overwhelmed by other factors in their life that pills simply cannot solve. In many cases, cognitive therapy succeeds because it teaches the skills that help people cope.”

Researchers pointed out that while the effectiveness of cognitive therapy depended largely on the experience of the practitioner, the same was true of medication, due to the judgement required in prescribing correct dosages of drugs.

The APA declined to comment, on the basis that a quote appearing on Wikinews could be distorted by subsequent edits of the article.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

On Friday, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ratified the next generation of Wi-Fi Alliance certification known as 802.11n. The path to ratification began on September 11, 2003 with 11 major drafts of the specification over the course of six years. Even though just approved, wireless devices have been available on the the market for over two years, running on what is known as “draft n” or “pre-N”.

The 802.11n standard operates on both the 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz frequencies. This will allow it to be backwards compatible with 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g, provided that the base station has dual radios. The speeds of 802.11n are substantially faster than that of its predecessors with a maximum theoretical throughput of 600Mbit/s.

Very few additions were made to the 802.11n draft standard over the last two years, so most if not all “draft n” hardware available on the market today is expected to be compatible with n-standard devices available in the future. In a similar process of the upgrade from “pre-G” to 802.11g, it is expected that most manufacturers of wireless hardware will release new firmware to bring all draft devices up to full standard compliance.

Wednesday, June 7, 2006Counter-terrorism police has arrested two males, aged 16 and 21, in England.

The two are accused of having connections to a Canadian bomb plot in which 17 people were arrested in Toronto on June 3. The alleged plot included plans to bomb and takeover the Canadian Parliament, take Military Police officers hostage and bomb public buildings. It also included beheading Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Times quoted an anonymous security source as saying, “We believe that people living in the UK played a pivotal role in helping to organise this series of planned attacks. This is an example of the extremist soup we have in this country with lots of overlapping links.”

“The operation did not involve armed officers,” said the Manchester Police department.

Police say that the 21-year-old came from Canada and arrived at Manchester Airport in England yesterday while walking off a plane. Police also say that he lived with some of the suspected terrorists arrested in Toronto. He is said to be of Pakistani descent and may have citizenship in the United Kingdom.

The 16-year-old was arrested in West Yorkshire a few hours after the 21-year-old was arrested. Police say that they tracked him down via cellular phone records and documents found in Toronto.

Police say that the two males are connected and that a security alert was issued when authorities learned the 21-year-old male had left Canada.

The names of the 2 suspects have not yet been released. Police have searched at least 4 homes in Dewsbury, Hanover Square and Bradford in England.

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

A German man, Khaled al-Masri, has filed a lawsuit against the CIA for alleged torture when he was held prisoner for five months in Afghanistan last year. He was arrested in 2004 in connection with the September 11 attacks when he was stopped in Macedonia. After being arrested, he was flown to Afghanistan for questioning.

Masri said his cell in Afghanistan was cold, dirty and in a cellar, with no light and one dirty cover for warmth. The first night he said he was kicked and beaten and warned by an interrogator: “You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representing Mr. al-Masri in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Alexandria, Virginia seeking damages of at least $75,000. The main defendant is former CIA director George Tenet.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Germany and would not comment on the lawsuit but the new German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “I’m happy to say we have discussed the one case, which the government of the United States has of course accepted as a mistake…”

A senior U.S. official accompanying Condoleezza Rice to Romania said that Rice had not admitted to any mistakes in the handling of Masri. “We are not quite sure what was in her head,” he said, referring to Merkel.