Saturday, April 17, 2010

Journalist, counselor, painter, and US 2012 Presidential candidate Joe Schriner of Cleveland, Ohio took some time to discuss his campaign with Wikinews in an interview.

Schriner previously ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, but failed to gain much traction in the races. He announced his candidacy for the 2012 race immediately following the 2008 election. Schriner refers to himself as the “Average Joe” candidate, and advocates a pro-life and pro-environmentalist platform. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, and has published public policy papers exploring solutions to American issues.

Wikinews reporter William Saturn? talks with Schriner and discusses his campaign.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

On Tuesday morning, many Comcast internet users were reporting problems connecting to Google services, such as web search, personalized pages, and Gmail.

Since the original reporting, other US ISP users also reported that they could not connect to Google.

Google released a statement saying that they are investigating the problem. Comcast support states that a ticket has been filed.

Internet users also reporting that other leading websites, such as YouTube and Amazon were not loading on the same ISP networks.

Outages by the leading websites are not uncommon, such as a technical glitch at AOL back in June that delayed emails for several hours.

The Google outage brought up the topic of Net Neutrality on many internet websites and forums, such as Digg.

It has been announced that a DNS server in Massachusetts went down, causing the problems and that it has been fixed.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Politicians from both houses of the United States Congress have reached a consensus over a stimulus package worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The package was bridged between the House of Representatives‘ version of the stimulus, which was worth US$820 billion, and the Senate‘s version, which cost $838 billion. The package now costs $789 billion, and devotes resources to tax cuts and spending intended to help revive the faltering US economy.

The House of Representatives’ version of the bill was passed without any Republican support, while the Senate’s version, which was voted upon on Tuesday, was backed by only three Republican senators.

The stimulus is aimed at giving help to those who have suffered from the recession, in the form of food stamps, health coverage, unemployment benefits, and various other things.

US President Barack Obama hailed the agreement as a “hard-fought compromise”.

“I want to thank the Democrats and Republicans in Congress who came together,” he said, “with the urgency that this moment demands.”

Obama is to sign to bill into law after the revised version of the stimulus is passed by Congress. He has said that he wants the bill on his desk ready to sign by this weekend.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid estimated that the package should introduce three and a half million jobs. More than a third of it is to be devoted to various incentives for middle-class Americans and tax cuts.

Republican politicians, however, still disapprove of the stimulus plan, saying that the package is too costly and will increase the size of the federal government and not create any new jobs.

US stock markets posted modest gains at the end of day following the agreement.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has made the first loans to U.S. citizens who do not have a bank account. Grameen Bank is experienced in micro-financing in its home country, lending money to poor women that want to start small businesses.

Since the start of the mortgage-crisis more people in the U.S. tend to turn to fringe financial institutions bypassing the mainstream bank institutes. “Now is a good time because of … the subprime crisis and that highlights the issue that the financial system is not perfect,” , says the bank’s founder and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Grameen Bank started in 1976 by lending a total amount of $27.00 to 42 Bangladesh women. To date the bank has made over $6.5 billion in loans to 7 million people in Bangladesh.

Grameen Bank’s first loans of approximately $50,000.00 in total in the U.S. was to a group of women in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Garmeen Bank plans to offer $176 million in loans in New York City the next five years, and after that expanding into business as remittances and mortgages all over the U.S., as it has done in Bangladesh.