Saturday, April 9, 2005

The top money grossing entertainers in Australia in 2005 were not Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, or Russell Crowe. In fact, it was four tot-time entertainers, the Wiggles, with their preference for bright colours and sing-along dance numbers. Their earnings level was estimated at AU$45 million over the last year by Australian publication Business Review Weekly (BRW), in its yearly who’s-who ranking of the nation’s top 50 entertainment earners.

“They got into the market early, they took time to understand their audience, not only children but the parents who pay for everything,” BRW managing editor Tony Featherstone, said.

Though almost doubling her earnings from the previous year, Nicole Kidman only made second place, at AU$40m. And Crowe came in third, at “only” AU$27m. Fourth place was long-time heavy metal favourites, AC/DC, whose estimated income was AU$18m.

Another children’s entertainment band, Hi-5 came in sixth with $15m, after Naomi Watts.

Sunday, January 2, 2005

< 26 December-31 December 2004 • Index • 11-18 January 2005 >

Articles dated 1 to 10 January 2005 are included in the compilation below.Experimental Format

Sunday, February 7, 2021

The New Zealand Government on Thursday announced the creation of a new public holiday, Matariki. Matariki marks the beginning of the M?ori New Year, which coincides with the rising of the star cluster Pleiades, known as Matariki in the M?ori language.

At Waitangi, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said “This will be a day to acknowledge our nation’s unique, shared identity, and the importance of tikanga M?ori. It’s going to be something very special, and something uniquely New Zealand.” Ardern also said the new holiday would break up the over-4 month gap between public holidays in June and October.

The date of the Matariki holiday is not consistent from year to year, as it follows Maramataka, the M?ori lunar calendar, but would likely always fall on a Monday or Friday according to Ardern. A Matariki advisory group has been established, with M?ori Crown Relations — Te Arawhiti — Minister Kelvin Davis explaining that the purpose of the group is “to provide advice on future dates of the public holiday, how it should be celebrated and to support the development of resources to educate the public on Matariki and the celebrations”. The first Matariki holiday is scheduled for Friday, June 24 of next year.

Ardern’s Labour Party made the Matariki holiday an election promise, and won last year’s general election with a majority. This result was the best for any party since New Zealand’s 1996 adoption of a mixed-member proportional system.

This is not the first attempt to make Matariki a public holiday. In 2009, M?ori Party Member of Parliament Rahui Katene introduced legislation to create a Matariki public holiday. While it was supported by the then-opposition Labour Party, the governing National Party did not support it, and it was defeated with 59 votes in favour and 63 votes against.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

The Bathurst Regional Council has begun preparing the Mount Panorama motor racing circuit for the inaugural Bathurst International Motorsport Festival (BIMF) to be held between April 13 and 16, 2006. The Mount Panorama motor racing circuit is considered to be the home of motorsport in Australia.

Council’s staff have been busy cleaning the facilities, erecting signage, checking pedestrian bridges and inspecting the track surface for the past few days.

The BIMF will be the first event to be held at the 6.2 kilometre circuit over Easter since 2000. In 2000, Event Management Specialists held the first motorcycle racing event since 1990, but due to EMS going bankrupt a short time after their 2000 event was ran and the inability of the then Bathurst City Council to find another promoter, the Easter event was canned.

The BIMF is inspired by the Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival in the United Kingdom. The Bathurst Regional Council and event promoter Global Entertainment Team promise that the event “will cater for all motoring enthusiasts, collectors and historians”.

According to the BIMF website, the on-track program consists of:

• Manufacturers showcasing their vehicles and track times
• Historic touring car races
• Aussie racing car races
• Australian GT sports car
• Parade laps by car clubs
• Parade laps and races by “Legends of Motorsport”
• Stunt car and bike events
• Rally cars
• Displays of cars from all eras of Mount Panorama’s history
• The chance for patrons to purchase a ride around the circuit in a race car.

Off the track, the organisers have promised manufacturer displays, merchandise stands, music, joyflights, Off-road demonstrations and joyrides, autograph sessions and interviews with influential people in the Australian motor industry.

Monday, December 2, 2019

On Friday, 28-year-old Usman Khan stabbed reportedly several people at Fishmongers’ Hall in London with a large knife, then fled up London Bridge. Members of the public confronted him; one man sprayed Khan with a fire extinguisher, others struck him with their fists and took his knife, and another, a Polish chef named ?ukasz, harried him with a five-foot narwhal tusk. Khan was pinned to the ground. Police arrived and shot him dead. By reports on Saturday, two of Khan’s victims died, and three others were seriously injured.

According to police, they received the first call about the attack at Fishmongers’ Hall around 2:00 p.m. local time. Khan reportedly started attacking people there, and one of them died inside of the hall, according to The Times. Police reported the attacker exited the Hall and continued to attack others.

At the London Bridge, members of the public stopped Khan. According to videos posted on social media, people approached Khan armed with the fire extinguisher and the narwhal tusk and forced him to lie on the ground, after which a third person removed his knife. According to these videos and NPR, the police then surrounded the attacker aiming at him with their guns, moved a last bystander out of the way, and shot Khan.

The University of Cambridge had been hosting a program about criminal rehabilitation at Fishmongers’ Hall called “Learning Together”. According to a Twitter post by Amy Cook, director of the Learning Together event, the five-foot (one and two thirds meters) marine mammal tusk came from the wall in Fishmongers’ Hall. ?ukasz, who reportedly works at Fishmongers’ Hall as a chef, having thus armed himself, participated in the chase and sustained a stabbing injury to his hand before the police arrived. Broadcaster Piers Morgan commented, “The guy with the whale tusk is a Polish chef named Luckasz. Worth noting this for the next time someone says, ‘we’ve let too many Eastern Europeans into this country’.”

Police also said Khan had appeared to be wearing a suicide vest, though it was later found to be a harmless fake.

One of the men who held Khan down was James Ford, 42, a convicted murderer approaching the end of his sentence at an open prison. Another was tour manager Thomas Gray, 24, who cited only his experience with the sport of rugby: “‘one in, all in’. I did what any Londoner would do and tried to put a stop to it.”

“I am in awe of the people who ran towards danger to keep us all safe” tweeted Mayor of London Sadiq Khan (no relation). “The bravery of the emergency services and ordinary Londoners is incredible.”

Khan was convicted of terrorism years ago for his participation in a London Stock Exchange bomb plan and served eight years of a sixteen-year sentence. He was released in 2018 and has been out on license, also called parole, and living in Staffordshire.

Lucy Fischer of The Times told NPR, “[Khan] had been released a year ago on the provision that he had agreed to wear an electronic tag, submit to curfews and restrictions to his movements”.

“In the US there is a phenomenon ‘suicide by cop'”, Birmingham City University criminology professor David Wilson told the press. “[I]ncreasingly what we are seeing is some attackers wear pretend suicide vests as they prefer martyrdom than getting a sentence. I wonder if what we are seeing is another version of suicide by cop.”

Saturday, February 4, 2006

Jennifer San Marco allegedly shot and killed herself, as well as an ex-neighbor and six postal workers at the Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center in Goleta, California says Santa Barbara County Sheriffs department. Authorities say that Marco believed that she was threatened by a conspiracy among the workers at the facility.

Sheriff Sergeant Erik Raney has said that Marco apparently left writings in her New Mexico desert home “alluding to a vague plot involving the mail-sorting plant, a local medical facility and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department. She obviously felt that the post office was out to get her in one way or another,” he said. “That establishes as good of a motive (for the killings) as we can determine at this point.”

Raney said that the writings were described to him as “ramblings,” but Raney says, “they alluded to a conspiracy.”

In her home, investigators also found a check payable to ‘cash’ with the notation “will,” which could indicate that Marco left a will, “and that may shed more light on what’s happened here,” said Raney.

Marco has a history of mental illness, but was still able to purchase a firearm and ammunition from Ace Pawn and Antiques, owned by Paul Castillo.

Castillo said, “she (Marco) bought the gun for $325.00 without saying why she needed the weapon. She filled out an application for a background check, which didn’t turn up any problems, and picked up the gun two days later.”