Monday, August 3, 2009

Employees of two Thomas Cook travel agency offices in Dublin, Ireland have occupied their offices in response to management’s announcement of earlier closure dates for the sites. On Friday, July 31, 40 employees at the Thomas Cook store in Grafton Street began an occupation protest after the sudden announcement of the store’s immediate closure; workers at the store had previously been told, when the closures were announced on May 12, that the businesses would remain open until September 6. The day after, employees at the Thomas Cook-owned Direct Holidays store in nearby Talbot Street began their own occupation. A third Thomas Cook store in the capital, in North Earl Street, closed without incident; according to one employee who spoke to Wikinews, this is because the North Earl Street store was closed up and stripped out while employees were at home, leaving the workers to find an empty space instead of an office when they arrived for work the next morning.

Employees are demanding an improved redundancy package from Thomas Cook and allege a string of abuses by management. Thomas Cook management has offered the employees five weeks’ redundancy pay for every year worked at the company, in excess of the minimum two weeks’ pay per year worked required by Irish employment law, and says that the Grafton Street location had been losing money for five years. Employees, demanding eight weeks’ pay, counter that the company realised a profit of £400 million in the past fiscal year, of which €4 million originated from Ireland; and that Thomas Cook’s UK & Ireland chief, Manny Fontenla-Novoa, was given a bonus of €7 million earlier this year. 60 jobs would be lost in the closure of the two stores, which constitute all of Thomas Cook’s retail operation in the Republic of Ireland; a further 17 jobs were lost in the closure of the North Earl Street store.

Before the occupations began, workers at Thomas Cook’s locations, who are members of trade union the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) had voted unanimously to strike, alleging that the closures were being done without sufficient consultation of staff by Thomas Cook management. Caroline Cullen, accounts assistant and TSSA staff representative at the Grafton Street location, characterises the behaviour of Thomas Cook management as “intimidation”. When the consultation period had finished, she said, Thomas Cook management sent Simon Robinson, an executive director of the company, and a male colleague of his to close the office. The presence of the Thomas Cook executives, two high-ranking, business-suited men, in an office where forty-two of forty-four employees are women is itself intimidating, Cullen asserts; she says that Robinson furthermore attempted to “bully” the employees into accepting the five-week redundancy offer by saying that if they did not accept, they would receive only the statutory minimum. “You cannot live on 5 weeks”, says Cullen. “Travel agents are closing every week. There’s a hiring freeze at the banks. There are no jobs out there…We need 8 weeks to live on for the next two years while we look for jobs.” The extra three weeks’ redundancy pay would, she estimates, cost Thomas Cook €400,000.

A series of TSSA demonstrations against Thomas Cook took place throughout July. Trade union Unite in Ireland has offered its support for the occupiers and says it will take place in demonstrations scheduled for Monday morning.

Thomas Cook has accused the TSSA of making use of “dirty tactics”, according to a statement from Thomas Cook UK & Ireland CEO Pete Constanti. A court order has been delivered to the Grafton Street office requiring the occupiers to turn the keys over to Thomas Cook management. The TSSA, meanwhile, says that Thomas Cook is “riding roughshod over the right to take industrial action by marching staff into a room and telling them they are going to close immediately”.

Cullen says that the occupation began spontaneously. “We didn’t think it would go so far”, she told Wikinews, but when the closure of the office was announced, the staff “opened the windows and started screaming, ‘we’re not moving, we’re not moving’. We haven’t moved since.”

Monday, August 3 is a bank holiday in Ireland. Both sides in the dispute have delivered ultimata: Thomas Cook management demands that all staff return to work on Tuesday morning as usual or else the offer of five weeks’ pay will be reduced to the statutory two weeks’ pay, while the TSSA says that if Thomas Cook management do not produce a better redundancy offer by Tuesday then the business will face a boycott by the TSSA’s 800,000 members.

Ireland’s Socialist Party and Dublin MEP Joe Higgins have declared their support for the Thomas Cook occupiers, with a press release on Higgins’ official webpage saying

Socialist Party members have been leafletting Dublin over the weekend promoting demonstrations in support of the Thomas Cook employees. The smaller Socialist Workers Party has also declared its support and conducted demonstrations for the occupiers.

Cullen said that the support of the Dublin community has been “absolutely fantastic”. People are bringing the occupiers fresh-baked scones and cakes and donating money, while morale inside the occupied store is “brilliant”. In contrast to the occupation at Vestas in England, where employees have been inside the factory continuously for two weeks, Thomas Cook employees have a chance to go home for a few hours or sleep in one of five rooms at a nearby hotel, although many do sleep in the office overnight. Nearby businesses are providing the occupiers with food at discount prices and, again in contrast to Vestas, the police and security are not interfering with the arrival of food and drink. Thomas Cook management have cut off telephone and internet access to at least some of the affected offices, but employees stay in touch with the outside world via their personal mobile telephones.

Cullen said that a chance for a peaceful resolution to the situation, without the involvement of the Gardai, was up to Thomas Cook management. “Thomas Cook have the chance to come to the table and talk to us. It’s in their hands, they still have the chance to come back.”

Pauline McManigan, a TSSA member and employee at Thomas Cook subsidiary Direct Holidays’ shop in Talbot Street, echoed Cullen’s sentiments. “John Kinnane [Thomas Cook’s managing director for Direct Holidays] has made things extremely difficult for all staff. He has intimidated staff, bullied staff and used abusive language toward female staff”, telling one employee today to “fuck off” in response to a query. Kinnane refused to recognise the TSSA as representing the Direct Holidays staff; without union representation, Direct Holidays staff “were not in any position to consult with senior managers who had their own hidden agenda and proved this when they closed the consultation down when staff said there were other matters that needed to be discussed.” Kinnane, she said, made threats similar to Robinson’s in order to get employees to vote for the five-week redundancy package.

McManigan says that Kinnane has demanded Direct Holidays’ staff return to work on Tuesday as normal. “That’s not gonna happen”, she replies, noting that the Direct Holidays staff did not trust Thomas Cook management not to close and strip out the store while the employees were not present. McManigan gave the following statement:

Saturday, April 23, 2005

The interview below was conducted by Pingswept over the phone with Emily Levan on April 21, 2005. Levan lives in Wiscasset, Maine, with her husband and daughter, and she ran in the Boston Marathon women’s race on April 18, 2005.

To summarize for our readers, you recently came in 12th in the Boston Marathon, right?

That is correct.

You were the first American finisher.

Yes.

There was also a Russian woman who lives in the US who finished ahead of you.

You know, I believe it is, I’m not actually positive, but I think you’re right. There’s often a lot of foreign runners that live and train in different parts of the US for a variety of reasons. Some live in Colorado and might train at high altitude, or they might have coaches in the US.

OK, but as far as you know, for straight up Americans, people who were born here, who have lived here for long periods of time and are not going anywhere special to train, you were the first finisher.

That is correct.

So congratulations, that’s very impressive. In the rest of your life, my understanding is that you are going to nursing school.

I am. I’m at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. and I have been going to nursing school for a couple years now. I’m just going part time right now because of the baby and other things going on in my world.

Your baby is currently one and a half?

She’s fifteen months.

Fifteen months, so one and one quarter. 1.25, sure.

Hopefully I’ll finish up nursing school in December. That is the tentative plan.

So you’re almost done.

I just have a couple classes left. I’ll take one class this summer and two classes in the fall.

You ran the Boston Marathon originally two years ago?

Actually, I ran it for the first time in 99. I’ve run it four times. I did run it two years ago as well.

You ran it two years ago, and you also came in twelfth then, if not the top American finisher then. You were the fourth?

I think third or fourth. I can’t remember exactly.

How long were you actually training for this marathon in particular?

I’d say about 4 months. I typically try to train about four months for each race. It depends a little bit on what kind of shape I’m in leading up to the training. Four months is usually the time frame I shoot for.

And how many miles a week were you doing–I assume you peaked somewhere right before the marathon.

At the peak, I have a month or six week period where I’ve built up to my peak training, and I was probably doing between 90 to 100 miles a week.

Was there a lot of variation in your day to day mileage, or was it pretty much you’re doing 1/7th of that mileage every day?

There’s definitely variation, probably more so in the type of workout that i did each day. For example two days a week I would do a speed workout, so I might be doing mile repeats, which just means that I do a mile in a specific time, and then I might jog for a couple minutes and then another one and another one. I’d do a series of eight mile repeats on that specific workout day. My other speed workout would be a marathon pace run, so I might run 8 or 10 miles at my marathon pace. If my marathon pace is 6 minute miles, I’d do a two mile jog warm up, and then I might do 8 or 10 miles at a six minute pace, and then a two mile cool down.

So you maybe end up running 14?

Sometimes what I would do on those speed workout days– on those days I might end up with about 14 miles. On some other days, I might run twice during the course of the day. Say in the morning, I might run eight miles, and then in the afternoon I might do six or eight more miles.

Wow.

Those days tend to be a little bit more mellow. More of kind of a maintenance run, a little bit of a recovery day. I try to have a recovery day after every hard workout.

Do you think that all of your training could fit into four hours a day? Do you think that’s true?

You mean the workouts for a specific day? Probably even less than that. Depending on the day a little bit, probably between 2 or 3 hours. Usually on Sunday I would go out and do a long run, and that would be a 20 or 22 mile run, all in one fell swoop and that usually takes two and a half hours.

So that explains how you’re able to do this, as well as go to nursing school, as well as have an extremely young child. I assume you talk to your friends occasionally.

I try to at least– have some sort of social life. This is not a job, so it’s not something that I do 8 hours a day. It’s something that I fit in with all the other obligations, things that I like to do too. I like to be able to pursue other interests as well.

You live on a road with no one else near by. Do you pretty much just run from your house every day?

The winter is harder because with the baby, I often end up running with a treadmill down in the basement. Brad, my husband, has pretty long hours at the farm, and especially in the winter months, it’s hard to find daylight when he’s able to watch Maddy, so I ended up running a lot on the treadmill this winter, as opposed to last summer, I would take her with me. I have one of those baby joggers, and that was great. I could just leave right from the house, and I could take her. She would be pretty happy to go eight or ten miles with me. Typically what I do when I go outside, I just go right from the house. The roads are so pretty around here. We’re pretty secluded, so I don’t have to worry too much about crazy drivers.

Do you ever try to go find big hills to run up and down?

I do. In the past, I have done a hill workout as a part of my training, usually early on in the training during the first six weeks or 2 months of the training I do a hill workout and I would find some place close by that I could find a warm up jog and run to and then do a hill workout. If I couldn’t find one within a couple miles, I would drive to it. It’s a little bit harder now with Maddy because I don’t have as much leeway and freedom with when I go running and where I go running. I’m a little more limited.

You’d have to load up the cart, er, the carriage into the car.

I’ve done that sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier to go straight from home. Running with the jogger up hills is not an easy thing to do.

When you’re in the race, you feel like, “Hey, I’m not even pushing a kid anymore.” Heartbreak Hill without the kid is substantially easier, I suppose.

Yeah.

Do you know most of the elite runners in the race? You know who they are, but are you friends with them, or not really?

It’s funny–I know who people are, but I don’t run that many races to really get to know that many of the runners. If you’re a professional runner, and that’s your job, a lot of those people travel in the same circles. They run the same races and they have the same schedules in terms of when they compete. I pick out a couple of races each year to focus on and because of that, I don’t get to know as many of the runners. As time goes on, you do get a little bit you do get a little more familiar with people.

During the race, do you talk to the other runners, or do you just run along and think things like, “I wish I were at the end right now”?

I think that really depends I find that if I’m feeling good and the run is going well, then it’s easier for me to talk to people, just because you’re feeling strong, and you’re not focusing so much on “I’m not doing so great.” I might talk to some folks along the way. Sometimes if someone passes me, I’ll encourage them and say “Good job, go get them,” and just stuff like that. I certainly find I’m not carrying on lengthy conversations with people because you’re expending energy that should be focused on the race itself. I enjoy getting to know folks along the way and knowing what pace they’re hoping to run.

In races other than the Boston Marathon do you find that you have good competition? I don’t really know what the running scene in Wiscasset, Maine, is like at all, but I imagine that being the fastest female marathon runner in the United States, you might not find a whole lot of competition. You say that you encourage people when they pass you, but having read some of the other interviews with you on the web, it doesn’t seem like people pass you very often.

It definitely depends on the race. Like I said before, I don’t run that many races. At this point, what I’m trying to do is to find races that are competitive so I can be pushed by competition. For example, when I ran the Maine Marathon last fall, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition. That just gets hard. I ran alone for most of the race. Running 26 miles at a fast pace all by yourself without anyone around you to help push you and motivate you, can be pretty hard. Because of that, as I’ve been looking toward the future and thinking about which races I want to do, I’ve been targeting races that will have a little more competition. That’s why Boston was one that I wanted to shoot for and I’m thinking about in the fall going to Chicago because they’ve got a pretty competitive marathon. It’s also a pretty flat course, so people tend to run pretty fast times there.

Most people run a couple of minutes faster in Chicago, right?

Yeah, exactly. And I’ve heard good things about the race too, so I’m looking forward to that.

Have you thought about running internationally?

Not at this point, no. It’s hard to find the time to travel to races, and It gets expensive too. A lot of my family members say, “Wouldn’t it be great to do the London Marathon or the Paris Marathon,” because they like coming to watch. At this point, I think I’m going to stick closer to home. I’ve got a few races, like I was mentioning Chicago, here in the States that I’d really like to do. Maybe once I’ve done those, I might think about something else, it really just depends. A lot of it’s a time issue, because I have other things that I’m pursuing and it gets hard to spend too much time traveling off doing different races.

Do you know Alan Culpepper?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You at least know of him, right?

Yes, exactly.

Have you ever been in any races against him?

This was the first race that I had run in that he ran in. He was the fourth overall male finisher. That’s a really good showing for an American male. I’ve read a lot about him in different running magazines and just heard a lot about him through running circles. But this was the first time that I’ve actually seen him run. It was neat because in this particular race, they start the women’s elite group about 25 minutes ahead of the rest of the start.

29 minutes actually, I believe.

That’s right, 29 minutes. So, I didn’t see a male runner until pretty close to the end, so it was really neat to see–I think I saw the top five male finishers because they passed me in the last couple miles. It was really interesting–there’s all these cars and press and motorcycles, policemen, so I could tell when the first male was coming up behind me because there was a lot more going on on the course. Alan Culpepper was one of the ones that passed me in the last mile or two. It was pretty neat to see him finishing strong.

You might not be able to beat him in a race but do you think you could maybe, I don’t know, beat him in a fist fight? He’s pretty skinny, right? He only weighs 130 pounds.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I wouldn’t make any bets on it at this point.

No?

No.

OK. Have you thought about doing things longer than a marathon? Like a 50 K or a 100 K?

At this point, I haven’t because I’ve gotten into the marathon, and I’ve really been enjoying that so far. I feel like I still have some room to improve and grow in the marathon, but I think at some point I’d really like to do one of those ultra-type races. For the next several years, I’ll stick towards the marathon distances. Once that competitive part of my life is over, I might move on to something different.

Based on your age, are you likely to peak around now, or you maybe have a few years to go before your legs start to fall off?

Before I can’t walk anymore? I don’t know. It’s really interesting because for marathoning you’ve got a longer life span than in a lot of competitive sports. The fifth place female finisher in Boston this year was over forty. You can still be competitive into your forties. I’m not sure if I’ll keep doing it that long– at least another 3 years or so. One thing in the back of my mind looking at is the Olympic Trials for 2008. I’m looking at that time frame right now. If I want to keep running competitively after that, then I’ll assess things from there.

That sounds good. When you came in as the first American finisher, did you get any certificates or cash or a medal or anything like that?

Yeah, actually, I won $2100.

Oh, great– two thousand bucks!

Which is pretty nice.

That’s a lot of baby clothes.

I know– or a lot of shoes. The shoe expense is pretty expensive, and I’ve been trying to find a shoe company that might give me some shoes.

I would think–couldn’t you just call up New Balance and say, “Hey, look, I’m pretty good, why don’t you give me some shoes?”

Well, this past November, after I ran New York– I usually wear Asics or New Balance– I wrote to both of those companies. I sent them a little running resume. I said I’d be interested in pursuing some sort of sponsorship opportunity, and they both wrote back and said, “Sorry, we don’t have any space or funds available at this time.” I was a little disappointed by that, because I was hoping to at least get someone to help me out with my shoes.

Yeah, at least some sneakers.

But in addition at Boston, they do have these crystal vases that they give out for the top 15 finishers, so I got a little piece of hardware there too.

So you get to put flowers in that.

I had some flowers in it; they’ve wilted so I decided to compost them.

Oh, that’s good.

Yeah, send them back to the earth, you know.

Has anyone else tried to interview you? Local paparazzi following you?

I hide in my car for most of the day. I did some local interviews–with the local NBC affiliate, and I’m going to do an interview tomorrow with the ABC affiliate in Portland, and some affiliated newspaper interviews as well.

You’re officially famous, then.

I don’t know. I guess. It’s been pretty busy.

Has anyone asked you for an autograph yet?

No. No autograph seekers yet, no.

Maybe in the Yellowfront Grocery in Wiscasset? “Hey, I know you!”

“I saw you on TV!” No, not yet.

That’s surely coming. The Chewonki Foundation, which is where you live, recently had Eaton Farm donated to it.

Yes.

And they’re planning on making a 12 mile long trail that runs from approximately your house to Wiscasset.

Oh, you know more about this than I do, that’s great.

I don’t know if it’s going to start right at your front door; you might have to cut through the woods a little bit.

That’s OK, I can do that.

Have you run on trails at all, or is it just, “I want to run on the pavement because I don’t want to twist an ankle”?

I’m not a big trail runner. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to running on trails. Now it would be much more difficult, because I have the baby with me. The baby jogger has some nice wheels on it, but I don’t know if it could handle trail running.

Yeah.

It’s a nice change of pace every once in a while. I don’t worry too much about twisting an ankle–you just have to be careful. I figure I can walk out my door and step in a pothole and twist my ankle, so I don’t worry too much about that. That goes along with being alive in our world. We’ll see. I’m going to have to look into that 12 mile trail.

Because 12 miles, you do that there and back, you’ve got a marathon on your hands.

There you go.

What’s your next target? Can you walk right now?

If I train well, I’m usually not sore. Especially on the long runs, my body gets used to running for that length of time and sure, I’m running faster during the marathon than I do on my long runs, but I think my body tends to adjust to the rigors. It’s usually a good sign if a few days afterwards I don’t have any major soreness. I certainly feel like I’ve done something significant.

Yeah, I can imagine feeling too.

No major aches or pains.

That’s great. What’s your next race? Do you have one targeted? Is it Chicago?

Yeah, I think the next marathon will be Chicago in the fall. there’s a 10 K race, the Beach to Beacon, you may have heard of it.

In Portland?

It’s actually in Cape Elizabeth. It’s put on by Joan Benoit Samuelson. It’s in August, so I’ll probably do that one and then shoot for the fall marathon.

Well, I think that’s all my questions.

Nice, well, thanks for calling. I appreciate it.

Sure, well, thanks for running so fast.

No problem.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

After hours of hearing arguments in the case questioning the legality of the ban on same-sex marriages in California, in the United States, the state’s Supreme Court deferred ruling on the ban, known as Proposition 8. The court could issue a ruling in the next 90 days.

Opponents of the ban were fighting to have the law overturned— saying it was unconstitutional for the state to have banned same-sex marriages. Californians voted in November 2008 to ban same-sex marriages, leaving the nearly 20,000 married same-sex couples wondering if their marriages, which were legal at the time they were married, would be voided.

“Prop 8 opponents would have the court choose between the inalienable right to marry and the right of the people to change the constitution as they see fit, and what I’m picking up from the oral argument in this case is this court should willy-nilly disregard the will of the people,” Justice Joyce Kennard said while addressing Shannon Minter, the lawyer representing the opponents of the ban.

One of the petitioners in the case against Proposition 8, Robin Tyler, told Reuters that she thinks “they [the court] are going to uphold our marriages and they are going to uphold Proposition 8, and it’s a loss.”

In June 2008, the state supreme court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional. Between that time, and November 2008, 18,000 same-sex couples were legally married in California. Currently in the United States, same-sex marriages are only legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

A man who hijacked a domestic flight over Afghanistan has been found to be working for British Airways.

34-year-old Nazamuddin Mohammidy was one of nine men who forced the Ariana Airlines airliner to divert to the United Kingdom’s Stansted Airport in 2000. A standoff followed for the next 70 hours with the men, who had guns and hand grenades, threatening to kill all 160 on board unless asylum was granted to them. The men ultimately gave themselves up to police and SAS.

Mohammidy was jailed for 30 months but he and the other eight had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal, claiming the Taliban was subjecting them to “medieval and brutal tyranny” forcing them to flee. They went on to win a High Court case to prevent their deportation.

It has since emerged that British Airways have employed Mohammidy to clean their offices, including a training center one mile from Terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport. It came to light when police officers stopped him near Terminal 5 believing he may be an unlicensed taxi driver, but he was able to suppply a worker’s pass. He is now facing unrelated charges concerning an alleged assault on his landlord.

The Conservatives have used this as an opportunity to attack the current Labour government. Shadow home secretary David Davis said “It would be an outrageous and potentially devastating breach of security if a former hijacker had access to British Airways property near the airport and a pass allowing him access to secure areas. Days after it was revealed that foreign airside workers at our airports do not have to pass proper security checks it is clear the Government do not have a grip on airport security.”

British Airways say he did not have a pass to allow him onto the tarmac at Heathrow and did not work inside the airport, but he could get into some secure company areas.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Bruce, Canberra — On Monday, at a press conference at the Australian Institute of Sport on the first day of an Opals training camp, the media asked questions supporting this Olympic cycle’s storyline that the Australian team is going to the 2012 Summer Olympics for a gold medal rematch between Australia and the United States women’s national basketball team, who are once again in separate Olympic pools for the tournament. Media organisations present included Fox Sports, WIN News, the Canberra Times, and Wikimedia Australia including our reporter.

The press at the first press conference consisted of a female print journalist, four video cameras behind the two rows of seats allocated for the media, and three microphones in front of the table occupied by the national team coach Carrie Graf and national team members Lauren Jackson and Jenna O’Hea. The media contingent largely asked questions about Australia’s quest for a gold medal, how worried the Australians were about the team from the United States and how much planning the team was doing in preparation to play them in the gold medal finals for the fourth time in a row. These questions mirrored an ongoing theme in the media coverage found in television media and newspaper coverage of portraying the team as one of Australia’s few serious medal contenders. The other focus was on early game against Great Britain women’s national basketball team, who are in the same pool as Australia, who will have an advance of playing on their home ground with at least one dual-Australian/British passport holder on the United Kingdom team and a former Australian national women’s team coach leading the opposition’s side.

In contrast to media questions from television and print reporters present, Graf, Jackson and O’Hea’s responses made clear their goal was in the present. The coach and players were thinking about who would survive the cuts to make the team, establishing a good team dynamic and preparing for teams early in their Olympic campaign. The Australian side was not thinking ahead to the gold medal round as they believe their competition is good enough to be a worry.

The press directed most of their questions to Jackson and Graf, with O’Hea only asked a question late in the press conference.

Following the press conference, Fox Sports interviewed one of the Opals in a one-on-one interview. Another reporter followed up with Basketball Australia’s media representative to ask additional questions.

In the opening session for the camp, a video photographer lined up a basketball to get a shot of a basketball in the foreground while Jackson and Suzy Batkovic-Brown shot baskets in the background.

The Opals had a training session open to the media early in the day, with six journalists recording in various media how players participated in several drills including a drill where the Opals, working in groups of three on three different courts, had one minute to attempt and make as many two point field goals as possible. In one drill set, Jennifer Snell made 22 of 28 attempts.

The final media open training session of the day, starting late in the afternoon, saw only a pair of Wikimedia Australia photographers and a Basketball Australia photographer present. The rest of the media had left much earlier in the day. The media open training camp will continue through until Friday, before the team starts a two week long training camp that will be closed to the media but not before two players are cut from a squad currently 19 strong that will be pared down to 12 by the end of next month.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

With the 2014 Winter Paralympics set for March, Wikinews sought comment from U.S. Representative Jackie Speier, who serves California’s 14th congressional district about the event and how current U.S. policies impact people with disabilities. Elected to the U.S. House in 2008, she serves on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House Armed Services Committee. For the first time ever, the Paralympics will be broadcast live in the U.S. on network television.

((Wikinews)) : Will “Obamacare” have a positive or negative impact on the lives of people with disabilities?

Jackie Speier: By-and-large the Affordable Care Act will have a significant and lasting beneficial impact on persons with disabilities […] Most importantly, pre-existing conditions will no longer prevent persons with disabilities from obtaining health insurance. Lifetime limits on medical expenses will be removed and preventive services will be free. All of these provisions of the law create health insurance that is highly supportive of good health outcomes for everyone, but in particular for those who have a disability.

((WN)) : Are there any Paralympic athletes or elite athletes with disabilities from your district that people should know more about?

Jackie Speier: There are currently two Paralympic athletes who train or live in my district that people will definitely hear more about in the coming years. One is a young woman named Allie Hyatt who trains in Judo with Willy Cahill, [whom] I have also trained with. Allie, who is visually impaired and just 15, has already won numerous awards and will participate in the Youth Olympic Games next year. She is sure to be a force in the Judo world for many, many years. Hyatt lives in San Francisco and Cahill is the founder and CEO of the Blind Judo Foundation.

Another great athlete is Mohamend Lahna who is training for the Rio Olympics in 2016 for the paratriathlon,” Speier continued. “He is from Morocco originally but lives now in San Mateo and trains daily at the College of San Mateo. He runs marathons with a prosthetic leg and has his sights set on winning several medals atworld and Olympic events in the future. Lahna has proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD), a birth defect that affects the hip and pelvis. He is married and has a 1-year-old child.

Wikinews also sought comment from other members of Congress, including John K. Delaney, Mike Honda, Kyrsten Sinema, Eric Swalwell, Raúl M. Grijalva and Ann Kirkpatrick but at publication time, had received no response.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Edward Stobart, famed for his construction of the Eddie Stobart truck empire and being its chief executive officer for over thirty years, has died at the age of 56. In a statement, the Stobart Group commented: “It is with great sadness and regret that Stobart Group shares the news that Edward Stobart, son of Eddie Stobart, passed away at 8:10 AM this morning at University Hospital Coventry, after heart problems yesterday.”

When Eddie Stobart — Edward’s father, who is aged over eighty — created the company during the 1950s in Cumbria in northern England, it originally involved itself in the business of agriculture. In the 1970s, the business was given the name Eddie Stobart Limited and became a haulage service. Eddie Stobart then handed over the company to his son. The enterprise subsequently became the most popular of that industry within the United Kingdom, according to BBC News Online; it extended to include transportation by air and railways, as well as warehousing and management of logistics.

Due to the cult following that they had achieved via a fanbase of ‘Stobart spotters’, which involves the observation of their company’s uniquely named vehicles, the Stobart Group decided to create an official followers’ group, which now has in excess of twenty-five thousand members. Eddie Stobart-branded merchandise has also been released.

William Stobert — the brother of Edward Stobart — and Andrew Tinkler purchased the business from Edward in 2004. Edward subsequently relocated to the Midlands and took over what was to become an unsuccessful truck trailer building firm in 2009.

Edward Stobart experienced his death in Coventry, England at 0810 BST (0710 UTC) on Thursday. The Stobart Group have expressed their condolences to “Edward’s wife Mandy, his children and family at this difficult time.”

Haulage firm Preston’s of Potto’s chairwoman Ann Preston described Edward as “the most iconic figure that has ever been in this industry” and that the death of a man who “was very passionate about road transport” and “didn’t want to do anything else” since he was a child was “a massive loss”. The Stobart Members’ Club have stated: “The club’s members will certainly have fond memories of the man who started the phenomenon off, created the iconic Eddie Stobart brand and made it cool to spot lorries. Stobart Spotting will continue and the legacy of Edward Stobart will live on.”