Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ian Narev, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this morning “unreservedly” apologised to clients who lost money in a scandal involving the bank’s financial planning services arm.

Last week, a Senate enquiry found financial advisers from the Commonwealth Bank had made high-risk investments of clients’ money without the clients’ permission, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The Senate enquiry called for a Royal Commission into the bank, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Narev stated the bank’s performance in providing financial advice was “unacceptable”, and the bank was launching a scheme to compensate clients who lost money due to the planners’ actions.

In a statement Mr Narev said, “Poor advice provided by some of our advisers between 2003 and 2012 caused financial loss and distress and I am truly sorry for that. […] There have been changes in management, structure and culture. We have also invested in new systems, implemented new processes, enhanced adviser supervision and improved training.”

An investigation by Fairfax Media instigated the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division and ASIC.

Whistleblower Jeff Morris, who reported the misconduct of the bank to ASIC six years ago, said in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that neither the bank nor ASIC should be in control of the compensation program.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Last night saw the first semi final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade, Serbia. The entries from Israel, Azerbaijan, Norway, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Armenia, Finland, Romania, Russia and Greece are through to the final, leaving the representatives from Montenegro, Estonia, Moldova, San Marino, Belgium, Slovenia, Ireland, Andorra and the Netherlands failing to qualify for this weekend’s final.

The aforementioned countries join host nation Serbia, automatically through as is last year’s winner, and the ‘big four’ – the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain. The other entries will compete in the second semi final tomorrow. Below is a summary of each entry in running order:

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Yesterday, the Milwaukee County district attorney charged Cory J. Feerick, a 33-year-old from Brookfield, Wisconsin, with five misdemeanor counts of stealing US$35,000 worth of flush valves from fast food restaurants and university toilets and urinals. If convicted, Feerick could spend to 9 to 45 months in jail, and pay between US$10,000 and US$50,000 in fines.

Initially arrested in late January following a local news television story on the thefts, he stands accused of stealing parts worth between US$300 and US$600 each from locations that included Milwaukee Area Technical College, Waukesha County Technical College, ITT Technical Institute, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marquette University, the Pick ‘n Save on Capitol Drive in Brookfield, and the Arby’s also located on Capitol Drive in Brookfield.

Feerick was dubbed the “Backpack Bathroom Bandit” by the media because video showed him committing the thefts while wearing a backpack. The thefts reportedly took place in September and October of last year, with several area police departments involved in investigating them.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Service to millions of Internet users in the Middle East and Asia has been disrupted, following damage to undersea cables.

The cables, SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG, which provide communications services for various countries — including India, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — are believed to have been damaged by a ship attempting to moor off Egypt on Wednesday, January 30, 2008.

One day later, on February 1, the FALCON cable was also reported cut 56 km off Dubai. Repair ships have been sent to both breaks, with capacity to India expected to reach 80% of its usual speed by Friday, February 2.

According to the telecommunications provider Qtel, a fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday, February 3.

A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Manchester United will be taking on eleven of the top players in Europe in a celebration match next Tuesday at Old Trafford, and the lineup for the European XI is coming together nicely. The game is a UEFA-Manchester United collaboration created to commemorate not only the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, but also the 50th anniversary of Manchester United entering into European club competitions. Funds raised in the match will go to support the Manchester United Foundation, which works with local charities as well as UNICEF to aid children in need. Italian Marcello Lippi will be in charge of coaching the European XI side, and his assistant will be Andy Roxburgh. Confirmed players have slowly been filing into the team, but with current Manchester United on-loan striker Henrik Larsson confirmed, the XI is now complete.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Debian, a free and open source (FOSS) Linux-based operating system, on Tuesday announced they are to shut down Debian’s public File Transfer Protocol (FTP) in November, via their official website. The public FTPs are to be redirected to Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) from November 1.

On Debian’s announcement list, Cédric Boutillier, a Debian developer, called the file transfer protocol “inefficient”, saying “FTP servers have no support for caching or acceleration.” Boutillier also added that FTP servers are rarely used. For over a decade, Debian installers have not supported FTP access on mirrors. This decision, however, would not affect the developer services, which would still support FTP.

FTP came into existence about 46 years ago for transferring files between two machines, without encryption. According to Boutillier, FTP “requires adding awkward kludges to firewalls and load-balancing daemons.” HTTP, which came after FTP, was designed for data flow between servers and clients. Popular Linux distros like Kali Linux and Canonical’s Ubuntu are based on Debian. The following websites are to be redirected to HTTP — rather than secure HTTPS — after October without changing the domain names:

1. http://ftp.debian.org
2. http://security.debian.org

Friday, October 12, 2007

I had an unofficial phone call from Gay Talese last Tuesday. He had just flown back from Colombia and he was cranky. “I’m happy to do an interview with you,” he said, “but what the hell could you ask me that’s not already out there? Have you even bothered to look?!”

“Jeez, Mr. Talese, lots of things,” was my response. I lied. The truth is that when I call people to interview them, I do not have a set of preconceived questions. My agenda is to talk to them and gain a sense of who they are; to flesh them out as humans. To find out what they think about the world around them at that moment. With Gay Talese I had little interest in talking about Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and with Augusten Burroughs I had little interest in discussing Running with Scissors. I want to know what they think about things outside of the boxes people have placed them in.

With a memoirist like Burroughs, even this is a challenge. What parts of his life he has not written about himself, other interviewers have strip-mined. When we met for dinner at Lavagna in the East Village, I explained to Augusten this issue. I suggested we make the interview more of a conversation to see if that would be more interesting. “Instead of you in the catbird seat,” I said, “let’s just talk.”

We struck an instant rapport. What set out to be an hour and half interview over dinner had turned into four hours of discussion about our lives similarly lived. I removed half of the interview: the half that focused on me.

Below is Wikinews reporter David Shankbone’s conversation with writer Augusten Burroughs.